


with a grain of salt and a pound of gold

by LinguisticJubilee



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Heavy Angst, M/M, Secret Relationship, Temporary Character Death, heavy-handed use of greek mythology as metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 13:52:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19702684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinguisticJubilee/pseuds/LinguisticJubilee
Summary: Years ago, Draco had resigned himself to the fact that his own personal universe revolved around Harry Potter.  Now Harry was dead.  Draco expected to feel unmoored, flung into space without Harry to hold him down.  Instead, he felt himself still circling in place, whirling around a jagged black hole that threatened to tear him apart.Harry could not be dead. Draco would not let that happen.





	with a grain of salt and a pound of gold

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [this work of art.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhfnTs0RZLs)

Harry Potter was declared dead on a Thursday.

Ron stood numbly as a Healer and an MLE quill-pusher performed the spell that would name Harry Unrecoverable and unwind his presence from the magical world. He could not stop thinking about Sirius’s Unrecovering over a decade ago, when Harry had a brief flash of false hope after confusing the term with “MIA” or whatever it was from Muggle spy novels. Hermione had to explain softly that Unrecoverable did not mean missing; Unrecoverable meant dead. There was just not enough body left for any other sort of magic.

“Ronald Billius Weasley,” the MLE desk agent intoned, and Ron wordlessly stuck his hand out, palm forward. Hermione should have been Executrix, she was the only one with a head for this nonsense. But she had broken down the night before over a stack of parchment, and Ron had pressed his nose against her hair and murmured, “I’ll do it,” so here he was. Ron sucked in a breath as he felt the magic settle around him like a thick, oppressive coat.

Afterwards, Kingsley Shacklebolt shook his hand. “He died protecting people,” Kingsley said gruffly. “It’s what he would have wanted.”

“He would have wanted to live,” Ron said darkly, and walked away. People had been spitting that platitude for the past two weeks, but Ron had thought better of Kingsley, who had been one of the few people to know the truth of what happened in the Forbidden Forest ten years ago. Harry had faced death square in the face and, when offered a choice, turned it down. He chose to return to a world that, frankly, hadn’t shown him that much kindness. And whatever had happened to him in the decade since — the breakup with Ginny, the breakup with the Aurors, the brief and hilarious stint as a Muggle study abroad instructor — Harry was ready to meet it all with a sarcastic quip and a two-fingered salute. Merlin’s balls, the man hadn’t even bothered to write himself a will. Harry had wanted to live.

Down at the Apparition Point, Ron felt an unspeakable urge to flee home, drop the freshly inked Certificate of Death next to his umbrella and crawl into bed where it smelled like Hermione and comfort. But Ron had learned when he was seventeen that it’s harder to restart being brave once you’ve stopped in the middle, so he squared his shoulders and apparated in front of 12 Grimmauld Place.

He let himself in, the door swinging silently on its hinges. As he walked in, his footsteps echoed throughout the house. This silence was almost oppressive enough to make Ron wish Mrs. Black’s screeching portrait still hung on the wall, just to break the tension. Ron walked to the long dinner table, the site of some of his best and worst memories, and sighed. “Kreacher,” he called softly.

Kreacher appeared next to him with a loud crack. “How may Kreacher serve Ron Weasley?” he asked stiffly. 

Ron crouched down next to Kreacher, who took a step back in response. Kreacher’s eyes were red and bloodshot, and he wrinkled his nose in something distinctly like a snuffle. “You already know why I’m here, don’t you, Kreacher?”

Kreacher nodded. “Master…” He burst into tears, which somehow made him both more ugly and more endearing.

Ron waited for the tears to subside; he wasn’t Hermione, willing to draw the thing into a hug at a moment’s notice. When Kreacher quieted, Ron said, “We’ll take care of you, Kreacher. They’ve named me Executor, but I was thinking you’d like it if Andromeda —”

“Ronald Weasley is not Kreacher’s Master!” Kreacher shouted sharply. “Kreacher will not allow such disrespect, Kreacher will _not —_ ”

“Cassandra’s tit, Kreacher, I thought we were over this blood traitor shit —”

“Kreacher will not allow this House to fall outside Master’s family, Kreacher will not break Master’s heart, Kreacher will —”

“Alright, then, but Andromeda? How does Andromeda sound? She’s a Black, right, she’s family —”

“Kreacher does not belong to Blacks anymore! Kreacher belongs to Potters!” Kreacher began wailing again.

Ron sighed and ran a hand through his hair, trying to figure out why he was arguing with a house-elf about who _owned_ him. “Mate, there’s no more Potters.”

Kreacher froze mid-sob. Ron frowned. “Kreacher?”

“Kreacher promised he wouldn’t tell. Kreacher gave his word.”

“Kreacher,” Ron began, but Kreacher shook his head and looked ready to start screaming again. Ron reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Kreacher, Kreacher, mate, listen to me. The old magic in this house is important, right? And it’s your job to protect it, to make sure we follow it, yeah? I want to give this house to the right person, just like you do, but I can’t do that without your help. This house needs you, Kreacher. Who does it belong to?”

Kreacher bit his lip. “The house belongs to Master. Master Harry Potter's husband."

***

The air in Malfoy Manor chimed softly, alerting Draco that a visitor had arrived on the grounds and would be at the house shortly. He shook his head sharply and checked the clock on his desk; he had been staring into space for the past twenty minutes. He sat up straight, adjusting his thick robes — though it was the middle of summer, Draco hadn’t felt warm in two weeks.

He grabbed the folded copy of the _Prophet_ off the corner of his desk, trying to look busy, but froze when Harry’s solemn face stared back at him.

_HARRY POTTER INVESTIGATION ENTERS FOURTEENTH DAY. ARE AURORS LOSING HOPE?_

Draco set the paper face-down in a rush. He picked up a book instead — a treatise on the Potionry of British Vikings — and turned to a random page, trying to calm his mind. He didn’t look up when he heard the door open. 

“Mr. Ronald Weasley to see Master,” Garty announced.

Draco made a great show of marking his place and setting the book down. “Weasley,” he said, plastering a smile on his face, “please, take a seat. And what do the Aurors need of me today?”

Weasley looked like shit. The circles under his eyes added ten years to his face, and his balding hair was in disarray. “I’m not here on official business,” he said heavily, sitting down across the desk from Malfoy. “I…” He shut his mouth and rummaged in his pockets. He placed an ornate, silver signet ring on the desk, inscribed with a flourishing _B_ on its face. “This belongs to you, I believe.”

Draco’s carefully constructed world came tumbling down around him. He stared at the Black family crest in disbelief, his gut twisting sharply in pain. The image-obsessed voice in the back of his head screamed at him to keep himself composed in front of Weasley, to find some clever way to spin this, but the rest of him was paralyzed with slowly growing horror. “You gave up on him.”

“Harry didn’t have a will, so —”

“I realize,” Draco said, snapping his head up in a flash of anger, “that incompetency among the Aurors is traditional, but I thought the office would have put in a little more effort when it came to the Ministry’s Golden Boy.”

“We did everything we could.”

“Bullshit.”

Weasley closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Gringotts will owl you a key to his vault in the next —”

“No,” Draco shook his head. Bile threatened to rise up his throat. “Fuck, Weasley, you actually believe it.”

“If you have any questions —”

“You’ve killed him.”

“Fuck!” Weasley slammed his hand on the desk, standing up. “Hire a Mind Healer if you wanna yell at someone, Malfoy, but don’t you put this on me. Enjoy your inheritance.” He turned to leave.

Draco leapt to his feet, voice shaking. “He always said the difference between your side and mine was that you didn’t throw people away when things got hard.” The words burned in his throat. Harry had screamed that at him, when everything had ended, and the idea that all that bright, beautiful anger had been erased from the world made his whole body ache. “Of course, he was always a stupid git, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Weasley whirled around. “He’s dead, Malfoy. What do you want me to say? Do you think I chose this? I haven’t slept in days. While you’ve been sitting here on your fat arse collecting dust with the rest of this house, the entire Wizarding world has been working desperately, and guess what we found? He’s dead. He got sucked into a fucking death mirror and died.” Tears rolled down Weasley’s face, but he didn’t try to brush them away. “You know, last week someone came up to my wife and told her it didn’t matter that my daughter would never remember her uncle, because she’d be able to see his picture in the history books.”

Draco snorted, despite himself. Harry would have hated that.

“People like that can go to hell. I didn’t lose the hero of the wizarding world, Malfoy, I lost _Harry_. And I hope for his sake that this secret married thing means you understand the difference, but don’t you dare act like you’re the only one grieving here. I loved him, and you could send me a Howler every day for the rest of my life and never make feel worse than I already do. So fuck you, Malfoy.” He left, slamming the door behind him.

Draco stayed standing for long minutes, staring at the signet ring on his desk. Years ago, he had resigned himself to the fact that his own personal universe revolved around Harry Potter. Now Harry was dead. Draco expected to feel unmoored, flung into space without Harry to hold him down. Instead, he felt himself still circling in place, whirling around a jagged black hole that threatened to tear him apart. 

Harry could not be dead. Draco would not let that happen.

***

_Harry wakes up slowly, enjoying the lingering feeling of sleep still in his legs. He groans and shifts his arms and blinks his eyes open in confusion when his hand connects with a warm lumpy mass. He turns his head and sees Draco curled around him, blond hair tousled hopelessly against the pillow. “Five more minutes, babe,” Draco murmurs, eyes still closed, and Harry closes his eyes and almost sinks back into sleep except —_

_Except Draco always wakes like a hair trigger, adrenaline pumping too much to fall back to sleep, the consequence of a year of sleeping under the same roof with Death Eaters. Harry tries to open his eyes but he can’t, and he can hear screams as he falls backwards into a pool of shining blackness, smooth and bright as a mirror._

***

Draco woke with a start, head pounding. He had dreamed he was in a graveyard, standing in a circle of robed figures as the Dark Lord swung Draco’s wand at Harry, killing him with a flash of green light. He rubbed his hands over his face, and paused when he realized he was wearing the Black signet ring on his left hand. Then he remembered that Harry really was dead, and that the bottle of wine he drank last night was probably responsible for his headache. 

He dragged himself to the dining room, where Garty had mercifully and impetuously left a goblet of Hangover Brew next to his breakfast. Draco sipped it gratefully and reached for the _Prophet_.

_HARRY POTTER DEAD!_

_AURORS CONFIRM WHAT WE ALREADY KNEW - HP KILLED BY DARK ARTIFACT TWO WEEKS AGO_

_In a terse statement released late last night, the Auror Office announced to a grief-stricken public that the search for Harry Potter is over. Harry Potter, savior of the wizarding world many times over, was killed by the Mirror Thanatou on November 8th._

_Since his abrupt departure from the Auror Office three years ago, Mr. Potter had tried doggedly to distance himself from his past exploits and stay out of the public eye. It would appear, however, that heroism is a trait not easily shed. On November 8th, Mr. Potter was playing tourist in a Muggle museum when a schoolchild unknowingly activated the Mirror Thanatou, an ancient Dark artifact gone undetected in the museum’s collection for nearly a century. According to the Muggles’ accounts before they were Obliviated, Mr. Potter sprang into action, rescuing the child and dozens of other attendees. However, when Mr. Potter attempted to disarm the Mirror, the glass surface disappeared, sucking Mr. Potter into the void contained within._

_In the days since, Aurors have worked tirelessly to study the Mirror in the hope that Mr. Potter could be rescued from its clutches. They announced yesterday that their efforts were in vain. The Aurors have been forced to conclude that Mr. Potter died instantaneously the moment he vanished into the Mirror two weeks ago. Harry Potter, once hailed as the Boy Who Lived, is dead._

_We at the_ Prophet _have decided to turn today’s paper into a retrospective on the outsize impact the young man had on our culture from his very infancy. While the obituaries and editorials that follow are from a wide range of perspectives, it will take us weeks, if not years, to fully grasp who Harry Potter was to us all._

_Unfortunately for the Auror Office, pragmatic considerations must come before grief. Sources within the Office have told the_ Prophet _that, now that Mr. Potter's death is confirmed, the Mirror will be destroyed imminently to prevent future tragedies._

Draco stared at the page in horror for only a moment before sprinting into action. He called his robes to himself wordlessly while dictating a Howler, thanking the gods above for Self-Cleaning Deodorant and dry shampoo. He dispatched the Howler as he stepped into the Floo, unsure which one of them would get there first.

***

Ron wasn’t even halfway through his first cup of coffee when the Howler landed on his desk. “Oh, Christ on a Hippogriff,” he groaned to himself. “I didn’t actually mean it.”

Salehi glanced over from her desk and did a quick double take. “Holy shit, Weaze,” she whistled softly. “You piss off the wife?”

“Worse.” He glanced towards the door. “Save yourself, there’s still time.”

“Oh, not a chance in hell, sorry,” she said cheerfully, activating the soundproofing charm in the door with a flick of her wand. Ron took a breath, opened the Howler, and promptly clamped his hands over his ears as Malfoy’s clipped, harsh yell erupted from the parchment.

_“LISTEN YOU STUPID FUCKER! IF YOU DESTROY THAT MIRROR I SWEAR TO YOU ON MERLIN’S SAGGY BALLSACK YOUR GINGER PRICK WILL NOT LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO GET GRANGER UP THE DUFF A SECOND TIME. IF YOUR TINY WEASLEY PEA-BRAIN CANNOT COMPREHEND THE SIMPLE LOGIC OF NOT DESTROYING THE ONE THING THAT CAN SAVE YOUR FRIEND, MAYBE THOSE HAIRY SNITCHES YOU CALL BALLS WILL HAVE SOME SENSE OF SELF-PRESERVATION. DO. NOT. DESTROY. THAT. MIRROR.”_

The Howler burst into flames and ash.

“What,” Salehi said softly, “the fuck.”

The door to their office burst open and Malfoy flung himself through it. “Weasley,” he snarled, then brightened when he saw the collection of ash on the desk. “Ah, so I don’t need to repeat myself. I know I called the Aurors unintelligent yesterday, and I just want to apologize. I had no idea how deep your imbecility could go until this morning.”

Ron stared at him incredulously. Malfoy’s hair dangled limply in front of his face and he smelled faintly of wine. There was no way Malfoy didn’t know how bad he looked, which meant that he didn’t _care_. “Salehi,” he said, not breaking eye contact with Malfoy, “why don’t you take a coffee break.”

“Why don’t I do that,” she agreed, standing up from her desk. “I might just pop back down to Magical Artifacts, chat with Betty down there.”

Ron waited until she exited the office, closing the charmed door behind her. “Did you love him?” Ron asked, already knowing the answer.

Malfoy rolled his bloodshot eyes. “I’m offering you a chance to save the hero of the wizarding world, Weasley, what the fuck does it matter?” He reached up his left hand to comb a lock of hair back into place and Ron stared at it — and his ring finger — meaningfully. Malfoy’s expression soured and he lowered his hand. “You didn’t know until yesterday.” It wasn’t a question. “So I really don’t see why, if the Chosen One didn’t tell you, I should.”

“I need to know if I can trust you,” Ron said, slipping on the mask he wore while playing wizard chess.

“You can’t.” Malfoy spit out. “Or rather, you won’t. That is always what this is going to boil down to, isn’t it? Because I fucked your best friend, and he didn’t tell you, and you will always blame me for that.”

Ron had hooked him. He knew, with a couple more pushes, he could get Malfoy to sing. He’d shout the whole story at Ron in a fit of anger and wouldn’t even realize until afterwards what he’d given up. Ron felt a twinge of satisfaction rise inside him at the thought of having Malfoy under his thumb like that. As soon as he recognized the feeling for what it was — ugly, malicious — he pushed it aside. All he was left with was a desperate tangle of grief, the same one he saw reflected in Malfoy’s eyes. Ron sighed, and instead of moving in for checkmate, he toppled his own king. “Go home, Malfoy. Try and make sure no one sees you on the way out.”

Malfoy blinked. “Does that mean —”

“Go. Home.” Ron flicked his eyes towards the door meaningfully.

Malfoy smiled, such a small and unrestrained thing that Ron felt like an intruder in his own office. “Alright, then.” He sat in the chair at Ron’s desk. “How are we going to do this?”

“What? We? No, Malfoy, go home.”

“Please, like you could do this without me. So I was thinking —”

“Malfoy, I mean it. Please don’t plot to burgle the Ministry in my office.”

“Now, Weasley, I —”

“I already have it.” Ron put his face in his hands. “Hermione and I stole it last night. In about three hours the Head Auror is going to destroy a transfigured hairbrush.”

There was a long, deadly pause. “Nice bluff, Weasley,” Malfoy said, considering.

Ron felt his ears turn red.

***

_A hand combs through Harry’s hair, waking him up. “Morning, sleepyhead,” someone says, and Harry turns instinctively into the voice._

_“Five more minutes,” Harry mumbles, but his eyes traitorously blink open and he sees Draco smiling down at him. “I hate you,” he says, grinning._

_Draco leans down to press a kiss to his forehead. “Come on. You’re wasting the day.”_

_Harry pushes him off and climbs out of bed. On his way to the bathroom, he glances at the open closet door and sees Head Auror robes hanging. He stops. “I quit the Aurors years ago,” he says slowly. “Draco?”_

_When he turns around, instead of seeing Draco, he sees a large, oval mirror, with glass so dark everything it reflects appears black. Harry watches the glass ripple, and a hand reaches out slowly from within. He takes a step back but loses his balance, and falls into blackness._

***

When Draco arrived back at his house, an Owl from Gringotts had already deposited a golden key on his desk, along with a letter he didn’t bother reading. Draco stared at the key, almost afraid to touch it. 

One night, before it all went to shit, Draco and Harry had emptied a bottle of firewhisky reminiscing about Harry’s first trip to Diagon Alley. Well, Harry had been reminiscing. Draco had been bemoaning the fact that he had cost himself twelve years of friendship by putting his foot in it in Madam Malkin’s. Harry’s eyes had shone, hands moving excitedly as he described the exhilaration of his first goblin cart ride. Draco had plopped his feet in Harry’s lap and tried unsuccessfully not to be utterly charmed. It was funny — Draco’s childhood had been pretty much a living parable for the moral “money can’t buy you love,” and yet for eleven-year-old Harry, his Gringotts vault really had meant love. That key had been confirmation that Harry’s parents had cared for him, that he belonged to this joyful, sparkling world full of people who _wanted_ him. It had meant independence from his festering turd of a family and the desolate wasteland of suburbia.

And now, Draco owned that key. _Owned_ it, possessed it in a legal and magical sense completely at odds with Harry’s clear intent to walk out of Draco’s life and never return. Whatever metaphorics were still attached to that key, they were not meant for Draco.

Draco stared for a moment at the signet ring he was too pathetic to remove. He then grabbed a quill and parchment and scratched off a hasty letter.

_Dear Mrs. Tonks,_

_I am so sorry to hear of your loss. I wish you and young Edward the best in this trying time._

_As I am sure you are aware, Harry Potter did not draft a will. As such, the Black fortune has passed to me. I understand that Potter always intended to provide for his godson, and so it seems right to me that Edward, the youngest Black, be his true heir. The goblin magic will arrange everything upon his receipt of the enclosed key._

_Sincerely,_

_Draco Malfoy_

Satisfied, Draco used his wand to fold the parchment and tuck the key inside. He floated the letter to the silver tray on the edge of his desk where Garty would collect all his mail at the end of the day. 

Determined to think no more about it, Draco set off for the library.

The day Harry disappeared, Draco had upended the Manor’s library in his desperate search for information on the Mirror Thanatou. The fruits of his labor were now spread across two long tables and an antique desk that, in a previous life, had resided in the Headmaster’s office at Hogwarts. He sat on his favorite old chair, this one previously owned by a Minister of Magic. This was Draco’s domain; this was where he was truly powerful.

He soon sunk into the comforting presence of the old texts. He must have missed the Manor chime that someone was on the grounds, because the next thing he knew he was roused from his research by Garty squeaking, “Hermione Granger to see Draco Malfoy, sir.”

Draco snapped his head up. Granger’s curly monstrosity had a few more gray hairs than the last time he’d seen it, and she was clutching a thoroughly ugly beaded handbag to herself. “Granger,” he said, biting back his surprise. “Where’s your lesser half?”

She ignored him and turned to the house-elf. “Thank you for accompanying me, Garty, it was lovely to meet you.” She looked up at Draco. “Ron is in time-out. The baby’s watching him.”

“What did he do?” Draco asked, more for the entertainment value than anything else. Draco wondered, not for the first time, what on earth had coerced Granger into marrying that man. Then again, he supposed, he had married Harry Potter, so perhaps he should be more careful. Glass houses, et cetera.

“He made me break into the Ministry to steal an extremely Dark artifact that killed my best friend, thereby jeopardizing my chances of ever becoming Minister and finally ushering in some reforms to this country, all on the word of a man who used to call me Mudblood but I am supposed to forgive because, according to a house elf, he fucked the aforementioned dead friend. Did I miss anything?”

“You punched me in the nose that one time.”

Granger closed her eyes, apparently basking in the memory.

Draco sighed. “Well, I suppose this is better, you’re at least _useful_. I’ve pulled a few books from the shelves that —”

“Right, before we do that, where do you want me to put this?” She pointed to the handbag.

“Put…?” Draco’s blood ran cold. “You brought the Mirror Thanatou to my home in your handbag.”

“Yes,” Granger said impatiently. “Because my house contains a toddler, whereas your house is accustomed to all sorts of Dark magic gracing it with its presence. Plus, there’s only you, so no great loss there.”

“Garty would object to that, I think,” Draco murmured absently. “I’ll clear a place.”

While Draco busied himself clearing and thoroughly warding a corner of the library, Granger wandered over to the desk he had recently vacated.

“Have you had these the whole time?” She asked, leafing through the pages of a book. “Why didn’t you come forward earlier?”

“Erm,” Draco said, laying down the last protection spell. “I had rather thought they’d come to me.” The Aurors were always knocking down his door, begging for help with some residual Death Eater curse or mysterious dark relic.

“Oh, Malfoy.” Her tone was so full of pity that Draco refused to turn to look at her. “Of course they weren’t going to come to you.”

“Why…” The realization hit him, and he closed his eyes against his will. “Harry.” Harry had been the one to vouch for him to the Aurors, for all these years.

“Yes.”

“He quit the Aurors three years ago.”

“Still Harry.”

The massive, broiling grief in his stomach reared its ugly head, threatening to overwhelm him. Four months ago, an Auror had come by for a consult. By that point, Harry should have scrubbed Draco thoroughly from his life. To Harry, Draco should had been nothing more than a bad decision thankfully forgotten. And yet Aurors had still come. Draco could picture it — Harry meeting old work colleagues in a pub, listening to them complain over a pint and suggesting that it really was worth their time to stop by Malfoy Manor. It made Draco want to punch something.

“All ready,” Draco said tightly, unwilling to show weakness in front of Granger. He stepped back to let her set up. He pretended not to notice when she subtly checked his wards, and felt strangely smug when she made no alterations.

Granger set her handbag on the ground, and Draco watched her use her wand to gracefully lift the mirror out of the bag and set it on the floor in front of them. _Harry’s in there,_ he thought to himself, and the thought made his stomach curl with half-dread, half-excitement. Draco studied his reflection in the black glass. He looked like shit.

Granger set upon his books with an eager relish so frighteningly familiar Draco half expected a professor to round the corner and award her house points. She sat in his favorite chair without asking first, and Draco bit back a snide remark. He would tell Harry about this restraint when he rescued him, Draco decided. It would appear Draco had gained some maturity after all.

Draco gave himself the task of examining the mirror, lightly touching it with investigative spells. The thing about the Mirror Thanatou was that, technically speaking, this was _not_ the Mirror Thanatou. The original Ketaptron Thanatou, the Mirror of Death, was destroyed in the Peloponnesian War. When Europe emerged from the Dark Ages and began to rediscover the buried magical histories of Ancient Greece and Rome, an English half-blood took Socrates’ statement that “all of philosophy is training for death” too seriously and took it upon himself to recreate the mirror. Like most fanatics of the Renaissance, his passion for the Classics vastly outpaced his true understanding. Trying to use British magic, which by that time had already congealed around a foundation of Latin and Anglo-Saxon spellcasting, to imitate a dead culture’s magic was bound to result in inconsistencies. The actual process he used, however, remained a mystery, as the would-be philosopher took very little notes before he was swallowed by his own creation.

But there _must_ have been inconsistencies. Because if there weren’t, then Harry was well and truly dead, and Draco’s fragile state of mind could not handle that possibility.

After about an hour of silent research, Draco looked up from the mirror to find Granger staring at him consideringly. “Yes?” He asked impatiently.

“You know, Harry went on a date two months ago.”

“Good for him,” Draco said blandly, internally screaming.

“Why’d you leave him?”

Draco smiled warningly. “What makes you think I left him?”

“Please.” She rolled her eyes. “This is Harry Potter we’re talking about. He would no more know how to break a promise than a troll could recite Shakespeare. Once he said ‘til death do us part’ he’d mean it.”

Draco felt like she had stabbed him. “Don’t fret, Granger,” he said slowly, carefully controlling his voice. “It wasn’t real. I was cleaning out one of my father’s properties when I stumbled upon a Dark object with which I felt I needed some assistance. My relationship with the wizarding authorities being what it is, I judged it more prudent to call Harry instead. You’d have to ask him why _he_ chose not to involve the Aurors. Regardless, we were in the middle of studying the chalice when we realized it was spelled to poison any who touched it not among the Sacred Twenty-Eight. As the Potters, I’m sure you know, were so unfortunately excluded from that list, I had to either make him a Malfoy or watch him die. He was already turning blue when he said those vows, we were under no pretenses. So you can sleep soundly tonight, since your Golden Boy’s reputation is still intact.” The fact that Harry had taken Draco home after and fucked him senseless didn’t need to be shared.

“I see,” she said softly.

She didn’t. Not at all.

***

_Harry is jostled from sleep by a loud banging. “Wake up!” A voice calls from far away. “Your breakfast is ready! Get yourselves up!” Half-laughing, half-groaning, Harry stumbles out of bed and towards the door._

_Right as he opens his door, the door across the hall opens and a little girl with Holyhead Harpies pajamas steps blearily into the hall._

_“I’m gonna kill your papa,” Harry tells her solemnly. She smiles and holds her arms up expectantly. “All right, all right,” he mock grumbles as he sweeps her up onto his hip. They descend the stairs of 12 Grimmauld Place and stumble their way into the kitchen, where Draco is busy scooping heaps of scrambled eggs onto plates. “I’m gonna kill you,” Harry tells him instead of good morning._

_Draco mock gasps. “You wouldn’t let your father kill me, would you?” He says to the little girl._

_She shakes her head, smiling big._

_“And that, Lily Alcyone, is why you’re my favorite.” Draco bops her on the nose and grabs two plates and takes them into the dining room. Harry grabs the third and follows him in. As he sets his plate down at the table, he glances along the length of it, frowning softly. “What’s wrong, Harry?”_

_“Just thinking about them,” he says quietly, hugging their daughter closer. Harry is remembering the early days of the Order, this dining room filled with people — Fred and Tonks tossing dinner rolls over Remus’s head, Sirius laughing with Mad-Eye. “Everyone who’s gone.” But that’s wrong, isn’t it? Because they’re not all gone. His heart begins to race. “Ron and Hermione.”_

_“What about them?”_

_“They don’t know. I was gonna tell them...but then you, we.” His heart begins to race. “This isn’t real.”_

_“Daddy?” Lily’s voice is close to his ear, and he hugs her closer. “Daddy, what’s wrong?”_

_This time, when the darkness rushes in, Harry is crying._

***

Draco must have slept at some point during the night, because come morning he had blurry recollections of his aunt Bellatrix's laughter and a stranger's screams. Except for those hazy dreams, Draco would have sworn he had spent all night blinking up at his ceiling, hopelessly awake as his thoughts kept returning to the Mirror and finding a way to unlock it.

Eventually, he roused himself and dragged himself to the breakfast table, where two letters lay waiting for him. The first one was addressed using a sparkling pink ink, which meant the news must have reached Pansy’s sun-drenched island by now. Draco couldn’t open it. Pansy had been under the impression that Draco had been hopelessly smitten with Harry from their first days at Hogwarts, and Draco couldn’t bear to read her thoughts on Draco’s grief, which would be at once extremely wrong and exactly right.

The second one’s handwriting was unfamiliar, so Draco opened it instead.

_Draco,_

_Many thanks, but Teddy and I don’t need charity._

_Andromeda_

The key was inside. Fuck the Black family pride, Draco thought to himself. Draco rose from the table, his breakfast and Pansy’s letter both untouched, and walked to the owlery, where he quickly wrote a response and dispatched the letter himself.

_Dear Mrs. Tonks,_

_I understand completely, and do not mean to give offense. This is not charity; I am merely trying to rectify Harry’s oversight as I know he would have wanted. Please accept this gesture from him._

_Sincerely,_

_Draco Malfoy_

Draco barely had an hour’s peace in his library before a great horned owl glided through the open doorway.

“No,” Draco said, pointing an absurd finger at it, “don’t you dare.”

The owl, unimpressed, dropped a letter on his desk. It thoroughly ignored Draco’s call of “ _now wait just one moment”_ and glided back out the door.

Draco didn’t even bother reading Andromeda’s scrawl, just stared hopelessly at the small brass key. Draco placed it to the side, resolving to solve the problem it posed later. He was thoroughly engrossed in _Peloponnesian Curses_ , and was sure he could find an answer in its pages.

Twenty words later, his eyes wandered over to the key. Sighing deeply, Draco stood up.

Minutes later, he Apparated outside the Tonks residence and knocked authoritatively on the door.

Andromeda answered. “Oh, fuck a duck,” she grumbled. 

“Mrs. Tonks,” Draco said, bowing.

“You might as well come in then. No point in having this fight on the front porch.” 

He followed her through a bright, cozy sitting room into the kitchen, where she filled a kettle and began preparing tea — magicless, something his mother never would have been caught doing. “You’re wasting your time, boy,” she said to the cupboards.

“Mrs. Tonks —”

“Andromeda. Getting called ‘Gran’ every day makes me feel old enough, thank you.”

“Andromeda. I came to give you this.” He placed the slim Gringotts key on the counter beside him. 

“I don’t want it,” she said without turning around.

Draco sighed. “I don’t want it either. But someone has to take it, and I think it should belong to Edward. And if you never need to use it, then don’t. Just, I don’t know, stuff it in a drawer somewhere and Harry can come get it back from you himself.”

Andromeda turned around. “You don’t think he’s dead.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Draco shrugged. “Because he’s Harry Potter? Because if the Dark Lord couldn’t kill him, I don’t understand how a flimsy piece of glass and metal could?” _And because I don’t know what I’ll do if he is,_ Draco finished silently.

She stared at him closely for a moment until the kettle screeched loudly. She turned around and prepared two mugs without asking Draco how he liked his. “Let’s drink this in the garden.”

Wordlessly, he followed her out the back. Yards above them, a young boy was flying on a broomstick, whizzing furiously between two practice snitches.

“That’s your cousin,” Andromeda said unnecessarily. “He’s been like this since the Ministry made it official. Just comes down to eat and sleep. As coping methods go, I suppose it’s not completely unproductive.”

“He’s good,” Draco said, taking a sip of his too-sweet tea. 

“Harry thought so too.”

Draco racked his brain, trying to remember how old the kid was. “Has he been sorted yet?”

Andromeda snorted. “You’d want a werewolf’s kid in Slytherin?”

_I’d want a troll if he flew like that_ , Draco almost said, but Andromeda was watching him intently, and he knew what he said next would define what would happen between them for the rest of their lives. “My parents died, Andromeda,” he said softly, heart hammering. “I think it’s time we let their ideas die with them, don’t you?”

They stared at each other for a terse moment before Draco snapped his hand up and caught a snitch an inch from his face. He broke eye contact to look first at his fist and then up at the child hovering above them. “Think you misplaced this,” Draco said dryly, deactivating the practice snitch with a click and tossing it up.

Teddy caught it, looking at him consideringly. “Uncle Harry said you played against him at Hogwarts.”

Draco’s heart twinged painfully. “Did Uncle Harry say I beat him more times than he beat me?”

The kid laughed once roughly and flew off.

When Draco looked back at Andromeda, she was still staring at him. “It’s my fault you hadn’t met Teddy before,” she said slowly.

“Andro—”

“No, it was.” She shook her head. “Harry kept encouraging me to mend fences, you know. I said I wouldn’t do it while that fucker was still alive, full offense. But then your father died in Azkaban and I...still couldn’t do it. Couldn’t stop being angry for long enough to pick up a quill.” She smiled softly. “We’re none of us as good of people as we think we are.”

Something dangerous and hot sparked behind Draco’s eyes. “Harry used to say that,” he said hoarsely.

“Who do you think taught me it?” She turned away and looked up at Teddy flying. “I’m not an idiot, Draco,” she said carefully. “There’s only one way you could have inherited Harry’s things.”

The cup of tea in Draco’s hands was suddenly too hot to hold. “I have to go,” Draco said wildly, walking into the house. 

He left the mug on a table and had almost made it to the door when he heard Andromeda call, “He loved you.”

Draco spun around. “He left me,” Draco burst out, before the voice in the back of his mind could stop him. He felt sick with guilt, like he had no claim over the grief churning in his gut.

“Oh my boy,” Andromeda said softly, stepping forward to put a hand on his shoulder. “They aren’t mutually exclusive.”

In that moment, her face reminded him so much of his mother, and he knew if he stayed in this house a moment longer he would burst into tears. He stepped away from her and fled out the door.

Back at Malfoy Manor, Draco retreated to the safety of the library. He utterly refused to think about his aunt or their mortifying conversation or the appraising look in his cousin’s son’s eyes. He imagined himself successful at it, right up until the point he was undressing for bed and found the key that Andromeda had slipped into his pocket.

Staring at it in his hand, he realized with equal relief and horror that this meant he’d need to visit the Tonks house again.

***

_Harry wakes up to a loud crash in his room. He sits up blearily to see Draco rifling through Harry’s closet._

_“Oh good, you’re awake,” Draco says, emerging with an armful of clothing and unceremoniously dumping it in Harry’s trunk. “I’m not a house elf, Harry, get up and pack your own things.”_

_“Er,” Harry says, trying to comprehend first, what Draco is doing in his bedroom when they’d broken up the week before, secondly, why Draco thinks Harry needs both swim trunks and long johns, and thirdly, how Draco can still send Harry's world spinning with his very presence. “Why?”_

_“Because this is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing we’ve ever done, and I’m including the multiple times we’ve tried to kill each other as children.”_

_“Sorry, what’s stupid? Burglary?”_

_Draco sets down the dress robes he’s holding and glares at Harry. “I love you,” he says huffily._

_Harry’s mouth falls open in shock._

_“Don’t gape at me, it’s not attractive.” Draco picks up the dress robes and resumes stuffing them into the trunk. “I’ve known it for a while, of course, but I tried to ignore it, like the fact my hairline is thinning. But as I was sitting alone last night, very handsomely drowning my sorrows in a bottle of red—” Harry snorts, never able to resist Draco, “—it occured to me that you love me too.”_

_Harry sucks in a deep, painful breath. “Draco—”_

_“Don’t try to deny it, I know you better than that. I’m a coward, Harry, not an idiot.”_

_Hot tears spark behind Harry’s eyes. “Draco—”_

_“So, I realized that instead of continuing our separate, pathetic pity parties, we could end this foolishness right now and you could move in with me at the Manor. So get up and help me pack.”_

_Harry leans over the edge of the bed to grab Draco’s hands, stilling him. “Draco,” he says, and Draco finally looks up at him. “This isn’t real.”_

_Draco just stares at him, open and imploring._

_“We had a fight about whether we should tell people. You accused me of being an embarrassed goody-goody. I accused you of being a conniving attention-seeker. And then I left. And you,” Harry chokes back tears, “you never came after me.”_

_Draco shakes his head. “I don’t understand,” he says, but Harry can already see darkness seep into the edges of the room._

_“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers. "I was so scared of losing you I didn't want to risk it. And then I lost you anyways."_

_"Harry, I'm right here."_

_"No," Harry says, forcing the words out around his tears, "you're not."_

_The darkness envelopes them whole._

***

Garty stared up at Hermione with something like shock on his wrinkled face. “Master isn’t here,” he squeaked instead of a greeting.

“Okay,” Hermione said slowly. She’d been showing up unannounced at the Manor for a week, and this was the first time Malfoy wasn’t already in the library, researching desperately. She didn’t think Malfoy ever wanted to leave the Manor in the best of times, let alone when his...whatever the hell Harry was to him was trapped in a Mirror inside. 

Hermione and Garty blinked at each other for a moment. When Garty didn’t say anything, Hermione smiled nervously. “Will you let me in?”

“Uh...” Garty wheezed out, clearly on the verge of a panic attack having to choose between rudely leaving a guest on the front lawn and letting someone in the house while his master wasn’t there.

“I’m sure Malfoy would want me to continue working in the library even in his absence,” Hermione said sweetly.

“Right, yes, uh, quite right Ms. Granger, Garty will let you into the library.” The elf nodded quickly, seemingly relieved to have someone give him the right answer.

Once he turned away, Hermione winced. She’d outgrown that stage in her life when she’d yell at some poor creature that she knew their life better than they did, but that didn’t mean she’d ever be comfortable watching the servile anxieties of house elves.

At the library, Hermione thanked Garty kindly for his help and was even more thankful when he quickly left. She immediately began taking advantage of Malfoy’s absence to organize the piles of books and loose parchment on what she had reluctantly began thinking of as “their tables.” Really, what was the point of research without a proper archival system? If you found something useful, what good did it do unless you could find it _again_?

Grumbling to herself, Hermione lifted up a heavy book and did a double-take at what lay beneath. Instead of parchment, she saw a tight stack of bright-white printer paper clasped together by a binder clip. _SARAH AND THE SNAKE,_ it read in bold typeface. _BY HENRY LIONEL._

Someone had drawn an arrow next to the name and had written, _Is that supposed to be funny?_

_Yes,_ Harry had written below it. 

Hermione sat in Malfoy’s overstuffed chair with a loud gasp, the book she'd been holding left abandoned and unalphabetized to the side. She ghosted her fingers over those letters, unmistakably Harry’s. No one else could fit that much personality into truly awful penmanship. 

She flipped through the pages slowly, not reading the text — she had the hardcopy Harry'd signed proudly displayed on her bookcase — but instead fascinated by the conversations taking place in the margins: _WHAT THE FUCK,_ Malfoy had written on one page, to which Harry had responded, _IT’S A SLINKY?_ Later on, Malfoy had scrawled across the top margin: _You know that’s not how Parseltongue works, don’t you_ , and next to it, Harry had simply drawn a fist, middle finger extended. A passionate conversation about whether eleven-year-olds swear took up all the white space on one page and extended to a second. And, towards the end, _Oh fuck you Potter, this shit is making me cry._

Hermione prided herself on her ability to use logic to derive conclusions, but here she was, staring at all that these pages said and carefully did not say, and she couldn’t bring herself to complete the puzzle.

A sudden noise made her jump, and she quickly rearranged the desk’s contents to hide the manuscript again. When Malfoy walked in the room, he merely arched an eyebrow and said, “You’re sitting in my chair, Granger,” and Hermione bit back a sigh of relief and began insulting his organizational skills instead.

Later, after they'd settled into their research, Malfoy coughed delicately. “Granger, what is a _phasma euridikes_?”

Hermione blinked. “Um, what’s the context?” She said rapidly, trying to hide her shock that Malfoy just admitted to not know something. 

“Here.” Malfoy shoved the book over to her and pointed. “ _Phasma euridikes._ Euridikal phantom?”

“Vision. Vision of Eurydice.” Hermione scanned the page briefly to confirm. “Right. It’s a theoretical spell that’s a bit like an ancient Schrodinger’s cat.”

“A what now?”

Hermione shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Until you look at it, the object or person you’re summoning is both there and not there. It’s the act of looking that freezes it into place one way or the other.”

“Why do you say it’s theoretical?”

“Oh, it’s a scam. The spell never works, but the conjurer can always claim that it was working just fine until you tried looking at it. It gets its name from the crueler retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, the ones that say Eurydice was never behind Orpheus. In that version, Orpheus is a coward for trying to cheat death rather than kill himself for love, and so the gods punish him by lying to him. And then he looks anyway, and proves them right.”

Malfoy snorted derisively. “Stupid. Of course he looked back. His looking back had nothing to do with how much he loved her. The Greeks believed their gods were sadistic bastards who liked fucking with humans for fun. Of course he didn’t trust them to keep their word. If anything, he was the opposite of a coward — travelling to the underworld while knowing the gods are just as likely to grant your favor as they are to kill you or maim you or turn you into a dancing tree for a thousand years? _That_ was bravery.”

Hermione was viciously tempted to argue — unwavering obedience to fickle gods was the _point_ , the real test Orpheus had failed — but she caught a glimpse of the signia ring Malfoy still stubbornly wore, and decided to keep quiet.

Four hours later, she stumbled home exhausted. Ron was sitting on the couch, the Chudley game playing softly while he rocked the baby in his arms. Hermione didn’t even wait to take her shoes off, just marched straight towards the couch and curled herself around them. “I love you,” she mumbled into Ron’s neck. 

“I love you too,” he said, and she felt a kiss on top her hair.

“Harry is an idiot.”

Ron sighed heavily. “Yeah, love, he is.” 

“When we get him back I’m going to kill him.”

“Only fair.”

***

_Harry jerks awake as he turns over in his sleep and knocks his knees against the wall. “Fuck,” he garbles out. These cramped guest beds at the Burrow were always too small, but now with two people —_

_He opens his eyes with a panic. He is alone in the tiny bed. “Fuck!” He races down the crickety stairs in his pajamas, heart racing, until laughter from the kitchen stops him in his tracks._

_“No, my dear, it’s three stirs clockwise and one stir counterclockwise, or your dough will never rise.”_

_“Shit,” Harry’s boyfriend says. “Er. I mean, shoot.”_

_Mrs. Weasley just laughs. “You can’t possibly think that’s the worst this kitchen has ever heard.”_

_Harry stands in the stairway, dumbfounded, until a hand clasps him on the shoulder. “Fucking weird, mate,” George says sympathetically from behind him. “Fucking weird.”_

_Later, after they’ve eaten the breakfast Draco and Mrs. Weasley cooked, Harry sits on the back steps and watches the gnomes fight over territory. Luna comes out eventually and sits next to him._

_“How are you, Harry?” She asks, setting her head on his shoulder._

_“Er, good?” Harry says, before realizing it's probably bad not to know for sure. “Good.”_

_“Good,” Luna says, and he can hear the smile in her voice. They sit there for a while, listening to the gnomes yell at each other and the wireless playing indoors. “I could sit here forever, couldn't you?”_

_Harry snorts helplessly. He'll never stop being grateful for how completely the Weasleys have folded him into their family, but he likes the Burrow much better now that he has his own place he can retreat to when he needs._

_“Oh, Harry,” Luna says with a laugh. “What else could you possibly want?”_

_The question hits Harry harder than she'd probably intended._ Nothing _, he's supposed to say, the polite, grateful answer. But that’s bullshit. Harry is always wanting. Harry wants Draco to stop waking up with nightmares and George to stop looking to his left and someone, eighty years ago, to smother baby Tom Riddle in his sleep. He wants to have never seen a thestral and to know what his mother sounds like when she laughs. He wants Dumbledore to be alive. And then he wants to punch Dumbledore in the face._

_Beside him, he feels Luna sigh. “You ungrateful brat,” she says, but it’s not Luna’s voice, it’s something ancient and screeching and cruel._

_Harry is swallowed by black before he can turn to look._

***

On Friday, eight days after Harry was declared dead, Draco tried the sleeping thing. An excellent idea in theory, except how in application his mind kept forcing him back to a cold tower, awash in green light and terror. As this made the concept of resting unproductive, he rose before dawn on Saturday and had put in several hours of work in the library before the Manor's wards chimed.

A few minutes later, both Weasley and Granger followed Garty into the library. “Who’s watching the gremlin?” Draco asked, surprised to realize he wants to know the answer.

“It’s Grandpa day at the Burrow,” Weasley said with a wince. 

“No adults allowed, only the kids and Arthur,” Granger smiled.

Draco almost made a quip but caught himself, unsure if he was allowed in on the joke. He shook his head and waved them over to the book in front of him. “Look. Remember how we couldn’t figure out why the inventor ordered powdered hippogriff bone? Well, it’s the main ingredient in _this._ ”

He slid the book over to them. “Dyatlov’s Suit?” Weasley read skeptically while Granger greedily grabbed the book closer.

Draco nodded. “It’s a catalyst. It has no effect in and of itself, but layer Dyatlov’s Tincture on an enchanted object and the original spell becomes a trap waiting to be triggered. You can extend the life of an enchantment for centuries. The catch is, once tied to Dyatlov’s Suit, the original magic won’t work unless the target gives their permission.”

“Okay,” Granger said slowly, “so assuming the Mirror Thanatou has Dyatlov’s Suit, can we reverse engineer it? Find out the original spell?”

Draco shook his head. “No, but that’s not the point. This means —”

“The Mirror needs your permission to kill you,” Weasley said, looking up at Draco, his eyes wide in comprehension. “And this is _Harry._ He’s the most stubborn bastard any of us have ever met. If it came down to a choice—”

“He’s still alive in there.” Draco and Weasley shared a grin.

“ _Phasma euridikes_ ,” Granger said suddenly. “That’s it. The Mirror Thanatou is a _phasma euridikes._ ”

“I thought you said those were a scam,” Draco frowned.

“The way they were originally conceived, sure. But if what if that’s the trigger? The way it gets permission?” She glanced over at the mirror, glinting darkly in the corner. “To kill you, you have to look back.”

***

_Harry wakes up. He’s surrounded by a suffocating darkness that fills his lungs when he opens his mouth. It’s okay, though. He doesn’t need to breathe._

_“You worthless fool,” a voice screeches through the darkness, and Harry remembers. He remembers the voice on the steps outside the Burrow and the darkness descending in Grimmauld Place and Draco, Draco, Draco._

_He remembers the book signing at the children’s museum, and a mirror._

_“Do you think you’re too good for us? Do you think your life is too important, meant for something bigger and better than us?”_

_Harry twists around, but the voice is everywhere at once, a part of the darkness itself._

_“Or is the opposite? Do you think you don’t deserve us? Do you think that sadness you carry is all you’re good for?”_

_The darkness swirls, and Harry sees Draco, curled up asleep in an overstuffed armchair, a book open in his lap. Harry’s heart twinges painfully._

_“Aren’t you tired? Poor Harry Potter, fighting for his life since he was one year old. Always struggling, always searching for happiness and never quite finding it.”_

_Harry reaches out, and the darkness releases him enough that he can grasp Draco’s hand._

_“Don’t you want it to be easy?”_

_Harry’s lungs clear, and he realizes it wasn’t a rhetorical question. Instead of answering, Harry turns Draco’s hand in his. Draco’s forearm is smooth and unmarked._

_Harry laughs._

***

It should have been easy after that. But for all their breakthrough had made them feel like they understood the mirror, the reality was they were no closer to understanding what it was or how it worked.

Instead, Ron watched helplessly as Hermione and Malfoy hurled technical words Ron could barely understand across the library at each other until it was early morning and their voices were hoarse and their tempers were frayed.

“Maybe we should stop,” he suggested softly. “We’ll need to pick up Rosie in a couple hours.”

Hermione didn’t hear him, buried deeply in a book. Malfoy did, though, and his mouth twitched angrily. “Oh, don’t let me keep you,” he said cuttingly. “Harry’s only trapped in an extradimensional nightmare fighting for his life, I’m sure he’ll understand.”

Hermione’s head snapped up; apparently she heard that just fine. “Harry would _understand_ the importance of family, though I can see how you would miss that the way your lot throws each other over for the smallest advantage.”

Malfoy’s face went blank with rage. “Right, run along to your baby and explain to her how family loyalty means declaring her dear old Uncle Harry dead before a fortnight was out.”

Ron snapped. Malfoy had no idea what tripwire he’d just sprung, that he’d stumbled upon a wound born a decade ago in a lonely tent and had never quite healed. But Ron snapped all the same. He leapt to his feet. “You think because you fucked once that gives you the authority to speak for him?”

“It was a lot more than once, Weasley, but I can’t expect you to know that. Gryffindor loyalty apparently didn’t extend that far, did it? You’re just like him, you make all the rules but heaven forbid you actually follow them.”

“Don’t you dare—”

“What? Tell the truth?” Malfoy stood up, careless of the way his chair skidded against the floor. “You want to know why you never knew about us? Because he thought it was _fun._ He liked pulling the wool over your eyes. It made him feel thirteen again, running around under the invisibility cloak and pranking the professors. He was here more nights than he was in that dirty house in London and he still didn’t tell you. He _married_ me and he still didn’t tell you.”

Hermione was still, her face in her hands, but Ron shook with rage. “You keep acting like only Harry is responsible for this shitshow, when —”

“I told my mother,” Malfoy hurled out. “I never hid a damn thing. He came over for Tuesday night dinners. She wrote his name in the fucking family book. He brought her flowers when she was sick in St. Mungo’s. But when she—” Malfoy paused, his throat working. “When she died, I had no one. Everyone else had turned their backs on us, Pansy had disappeared again...I asked Harry to sit up front with me. At the funeral. Where...where family should sit. But he said that wasn’t a good idea. People might start putting it together. He came, alright, but he sat with Kingsley and the rest of them. She saved Harry’s life, did he ever tell you that? She saved his life, she loved him in the end, and he sat with the fucking _politicians._ ”

Malfoy laughed bitterly. “And the worst part, the absolutely fucking kick to the nuts, was that after the funeral was all over and I yelled at him and he walked out and Garty packed all his things, you still didn’t notice. It was like nothing had changed. So how important could I have been to him, in the end?”

Halfway through, Ron had forgotten what they were yelling about. Ron’s heart hurt, pointlessly and comprehensively. He still trembled with the urge to yell and scream, but this was not a fair fight, not with Malfoy hunched over himself, breathing hard like a wounded animal. 

The floor beneath them began to shake. 

***

_“You can have him. You can have all of them. You can have anything you want.”_

_“What I want,” Harry says, looking at Draco’s sleeping face, “is for you to go fuck yourself.”_

***

Draco raced over to the mirror, wand out. Its dark glass was swirling ominously, the darkness behind it folding in on itself. 

He felt Granger and Weasley behind him. “What’s happening?” Weasley demanded, like Draco knew the answer and was just withholding information for the fun of it.

The glass disappeared, and the air rushed past Draco’s ears as the churning darkness sucked it in. Draco stepped back involuntarily, and Weasley put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

A deafening screech filled the room and a hand burst out of the mirror. Draco didn’t need more than a split second to recognize the scar on the back of it: _I must not tell lies._

“Malfoy, don’t!” Granger yelled, but it was too late: Draco had already reached out to grab the hand and _pulled._

***

_Harry wakes up._

***

Malfoy collapsed backward, sending Hermione tumbling to the ground. Trapped underneath his unconscious body, she heard Ron desperately shout, “Harry! Harry!” Hermione shifted her head to the side and saw not one, but two unconscious idiots.

They did it. _Malfoy_ did it.

Ron grasped her wrist tightly and the next moment, the four of them were sprawled on the gleaming floor of St. Mungo’s. 

Hermione scrambled to her feet and out of the way of the Healers descending on Malfoy and Harry. Harry’s eyes were closed, but his body was shaking uncontrollably. Malfoy, on the other hand, was still limp and unmoving.

“What happened?” A Healer asked Hermione, and she did her best with shaky breath to explain that yes, that really was Harry Potter, and summarize everything they had discovered about the Mirror.

Healers levitated Harry and Malfoy onto stretchers and wheeled them down a corridor. When Hermioe and Ron moved to follow, the Healer in charge held up a hand. “Family only,” she said, voice brooking no argument.

“We’re family,” Ron said sharply. “I’m Harry’s Executor, so until we get around to un-Unraveling him, I’m responsible for him.”

“Alright, sir,” the Healer nodded, “you can go back with Mr. Potter. But Mr. Malfoy—”

“I’m going with him,” Hermione said, surprising even herself.

The Healer only raised an eyebrow, like even this complete stranger knew just how unlikely Hermione Granger claiming Draco Malfoy as family was.

“He’s married to Harry, and I’m married to Ron,” Hermione said matter-of-factly. 

The Healer heaved a sigh but beckoned both of them to pass. Ron caught Hermione’s hand and squeezed lightly before letting go and jogging after Harry’s stretcher.

Hermione followed Malfoy’s team into a small, brightly-lit room. She answered their questions as patiently as she could — _no, Malfoy didn’t ingest anything strange, though he probably didn’t ingest anything but wine for a good forty-eight hours; yes, he was fine until he touched Harry, for a given definition of fine that includes never sleeping and desperate anxiety._

After half an hour, someone thrust a flask into her hands. She looked up into Andromeda’s sharp, assessing gaze. “Er,” Hermione said, “thanks, but I’m alright.” When Andromeda didn’t say anything, Hermione said, “sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but. What are you doing here?”

Andromeda shrugged and took the flask back to take a large swig. “Family, isn’t he? The mediwizard told me you managed to talk your way in here, good job, but I’m actually the sad bastard’s next of kin.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize you two talked.”

“We didn’t. Not until last week.” Andromeda gave a small smirk. “I imagine your story is the same.”

Hermione turned to look at Malfoy, motionless in the hospital bed. “They can’t figure out why he won’t wake up.”

“Don’t worry,” Andromeda said, taking another sip. “We’re stuck with him now.”

For the next hour, Andromeda and Hermione sat vigil, keeping out of the way of the Healers who ducked in and out of the room to wave their wands about ineffectually and slink back out again.

Then, without any prompting and without even a Healer in the room, Malfoy jolted awake. He sat up with a gasp, eyes frantically glancing around the room. “Harry,” he croaked out. 

Andromeda quickly crossed to the bed. “Alright, now, Draco, calm down. You’re in St. Mungo’s. Everything is fine.”

He finally turned to focus on her. “What are you doing here?” He asked, seemingly genuinely confused.

“I’ve been asking myself the same fucking question. But here we are.”

“Where’s Harry?”

“In another room, getting fixed up, just like you.”

Draco nodded. “Right.” He swung his legs over the bed and stood up. 

“Woah, what the hell are you doing?” Andromeda moved quickly to get a steadying arm under him, while Hermione sat up in case she needed a hand.

“I’m going to see Harry, that’s what the hell I’m doing,” Malfoy said agreeably. 

“You need to get back in bed until a Healer can see you.”

“A Healer can see me in Harry’s room.”

“Malfoy—” Hermione tried, but was quickly interrupted.

“Granger, I cannot believe that you’ve lived through the past week and yet you still think you can talk me out of this. Now,” Malfoy straightened up, “will you show me the way or will I have to knock on every door until I find the right room?”

***

Harry woke up with a start, and Draco could see fear in his eyes before he relaxed back into the bed. “You look like shit,” Harry croaked out, smiling.

Draco rolled his eyes. “So do you,” he lied.

Harry just stared at him some more, and Draco shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. “I should go get Andromeda, she’ll be thrilled you’re awake.”

Harry’s brow wrinkled. “Andromeda?”

“Yes, you almost sent her into apoplexy, thinking she’d have to raise a teenager all by herself.”

“Andromeda,” he repeated, still looking confused.

“Yes?” Draco said, suddenly fearing memory loss. “Andromeda Tonks? Grandmother of your godson? Swears like a sixth-year boy?”

Harry’s face, if possible, got even more pale. “I’m not dreaming,” he said, but he didn’t sound sure.

“I should go get the Healer.” Draco, very worried now, tried to stand, Harry reached out a hand and grabbed his wrist. 

“No, don’t, just — stay.” Draco settled back down, but Harry still didn’t release him. “What happened?”

“You died, you dumb fuck,” Draco said, looking at Harry’s hand on his wrist. “The Ministry declared you dead, and I got all your things, which then of course meant I had to explain why I got all your things, and you weren’t even around to take the blame, which was very rude of you, but Granger and I managed to find you _not_ dead, and then —”

Harry’s hand tightened around Draco’s wrist, and he looked up. Harry’s eyes were pinched. “You saved me?”

_Of course,_ Draco almost said, but he bit it back. “Well, the Aurors certainly weren’t going to do it.”

Harry still hadn't let go of Draco's wrist. "I thought I was going to be trapped in there forever," he said softly.

"What was it like?" Draco asked, matching Harry's tone.

"Horrible. You were there."

"Gee, thanks."

"The mirror...it wanted me to like it. It needed me to want to be there. So it kept showing me vision after vision of what it thought was paradise. Except it was always just a little off. Something always gave it away."

_You always looked back,_ Draco thought, slotting the pieces together. He and Granger had it reversed. "How did you know it wasn't real?"

"It was too perfect. Everything was too tidy, too neat. You called me _babe,_ " he said, wrinkling his nose.

Draco snorted, but then sobered. "I was there, you said."

"Yeah."

"In your paradise."

Harry's voice was rough. "Yeah."

Draco looked up from Harry's hand on his wrist. "Everyone knows now. Blame Kreacher, he gave it up first. Actually, blame yourself, if you had just drawn up a will like a normal person—"

"I'm an idiot," Harry blurted out, then reddened.

"Yes," Draco said slowly, when Harry didn't continue. "Not exactly news, we've known that for a while."

"I wanted to keep you. I thought…this wasn't something I was supposed to have, but if I just pretended it wasn't happening no one would find out and take it away."

"Harry, that is the most fucked up coping mechanism I've ever heard, and the Blacks were notorious alcoholics."

Harry shrugged. "Didn't work. I lost you anyways."

"You left me."

“I didn’t mean to. You had Garty pack up my things. You didn’t let me come back.”

"Oh, so I was supposed to let you dump me again."

"You know, avoidance is also a shitty coping mechanism."

Draco laughed. Carefully, daringly, he lifted Harry’s hand from his wrist and linked their fingers. 

When he looked back up, Harry’s eyes were locked on him. “I love you,” Harry said roughly. “That's why the Mirror didn't work. Why I never accepted what it was offering. Because if all those bad memories are erased, if all the shit we went through never happened, then—"

"Then I'd still be an I insufferable, bigoted prick?"

"—then you wouldn't be the man I fell in love with. And I wouldn't be the man who fell in love with you."

Draco's heart sank. There it was, Draco's deepest insecurity, and Harry just barrelled right into it like it was nothing. Because a different Harry — the original Harry, one with parents and a native understanding of the wizarding world, who got to go on dates in Year 7 instead of hunting a mass murderer — would have no need for Draco.

Harry's hand tightened around Draco's. "Hey, stop that."

"Make me," Draco said automatically, and Harry grinned softly. When Harry just stared at him, Draco rolled his eyes. “Well of course I love you too, you idiot, that was never the problem.”

Harry shrugged. “Then what is?”

Draco opened his mouth to insult Harry, because the answer was _a million different problems_ , every little awful detail of the past between them, every pain and humiliation they inflicted on each other and on their friends, all ready to rear their ugly heads the minute they’d step into Diagon Alley and into a world that was not as ready to move on as they were.

But Draco found he couldn’t say anything. Because the truth was none of that had crossed his mind once in the last week. It was remarkable how little things mattered when you thought the man you loved could die.

Harry began to smirk smugly, and Draco knew he was defeated. “Fine,” he snapped, “but I’m blaming you when this ends horrifically.” He slouched in the chair, lifting his feet to rest them on the edge of Harry’s bed.

“Okay,” Harry agreed, leaning back against his pillow. “I can live with that.” 

**Author's Note:**

> the world sucks but you are amazing, [let's dance to pitbull again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhfnTs0RZLs)


End file.
